They saved the Esquire – and a neighborhood

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We’re exploring how certain places have shaped our community personality, what we might learn from them and what some neighborhoods need to be healthy for next generations.

Let us know what places you have passion for, your concerns and hopes for those places. If you are getting things done in your community, we’d like to hear about that, too. Email Carolyn Washburn, editor and vice president.

The Esquire Theatre anchors the Clifton business d...: Councilman David Mann, a Clifton resident, talks about the Esquire's significance to the neighborhood.

In 1990, the Esquire Theatre returned to life with three screens. Three more were added in 1999. / The Enquirer/Gary Landers

Passion for place

The Enquirer is exploring how certain places have shaped our community personality, what we might learn from them and what some neighborhoods need to be healthy for the future. Let us know what places you have passion for, your concerns and hopes for those places. We’d also like to hear big ideas for your community. Email John Johnston at jjohnston@enquirer.com.

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CLIFTON — The question is well worth pondering: What would Ludlow Avenue look like today if a fast-food restaurant had replaced the Esquire Theatre?

Which is precisely what developers planned to do 30 years ago.

They were met with relentless resistance from Clifton residents who felt strongly that no good could come of such a thing. So strongly, in fact, that they attended meetings en masse, rallied the support of city leaders and fought years of legal battles that reached all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court.

All to save a theater that turns 103 this year, and keep a Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant off of Ludlow.

“I think it would have been even more damaging than we realized at the time,” said Cincinnati Vice Mayor David Mann, a longtime Clifton resident, “because I don’t think we could dream what the Esquire could come to be.”

The story resonates in Cincinnati even now as elected officials and residents alike talk of their desire for neighborhood business districts that anchor walkable, livable communities. Madisonville and Walnut Hills are working to recapture that; Clifton, for the most part, was able to hold on to what it had.

The Esquire today is the hub of the Clifton business district, but in 1983 it closed, a victim of competition from suburban multiplex cinemas, VCRs and cable TV. Then, in 1984, principal owner Alvin Lipson announced he’d found a new tenant – Wendy’s.

Opposition formed quickly, despite Lipson’s insistence the restaurant would be a “deluxe urban store” without a drive-through. Some 200 people attended a May 1984 Clifton Town Meeting, the neighborhood community council, and presented a petition signed by 3,000 Clifton residents.

“We don’t want the village atmosphere disrupted here,” one resident said, an opinion hammered home by others during the 90-minute meeting.

John Morrison, who was president of CTM in 1984 and still lives in the neighborhood, says residents worried that if Wendy’s gained a foothold, a “fast-food frenzy” would follow.

“And that would be the end of our little shopping area,” recalls Dorothy Meunier, a CTM board member at the time.

“Very few people thought we would be successful (in stopping the restaurant) when we first started out,” says Meunier, who moved with her husband to Arizona in 1987.

But the doubters underestimated the tenacity of people like Morrison and Meunier. Morrison notes that Meunier had married a man from Great Britain and had lived in that country for years, “so she was full of (Winston) Churchill: Never give up! Never give up! Never give up!”

Nobody did, even as the battle took many turns:

• Cincinnati’s director of buildings and inspections approved the restaurant.

• Clifton Town Meeting began working with lawyer and Clifton resident Sidney Weil, who appealed the decision to City Council.

• City Council sided with CTM, voting 6-2 to bar Wendy’s.

• Restaurant developers sued the city and CTM in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court.

• The court ruled in favor of the city and CTM.

• Developers appealed to the Cincinnati-based 1st District Court of Appeals.

• The appeals court reversed the lower court’s decision, paving the way for Wendy’s.

By then, it was early 1986. The battle was 2 years old.

Morrison says it was his wife, Patsy, a former city attorney, who identified the key legal issue. It revolved around the underlying zoning for the area and a 1978 city ordinance that created an Environmental Quality District on Ludlow; that “overlay” zoning said new businesses “should contribute to the desired mix of commercial activities.” It did not specifically rule out fast-food restaurants, but the Clifton Community Plan did.

Mann was among the majority of City Council members who voted in February 1986 to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court. But before the court rendered a decision, the theater owners bailed out of the legal fight. Taking advantage of tax breaks, they struck a deal to donate the Esquire to the city.

The city then amended its zoning regulations, making it even more difficult for fast-food restaurants to land on Ludlow.

The Supreme Court could have bowed out at that point, but it said “a debatable constitutional question” remained. In its April 1987 decision, the justices ruled 7-0 in favor of the city and CTM. By denying Wendy’s, the court said, the city had acted properly “in its attempt to preserve and protect the character of certain neighborhoods ... in order to promote the overall quality of life within the city’s boundaries.”

Throughout the court battle, Clifton residents waged a “Save Our Movies” campaign. Citizens groups worked to raise money to buy and reopen the Esquire. Once the city took ownership, it handed the deed over to the Clifton Theatre Corp., whose president was John Morrison.

It sold partnerships to investors at $20,000 a share. Some people bought partial shares. By 1989, nearing the fundraising goal of $600,000, renovation of the gutted single-screen theater began.

In April 1990, almost seven years after it closed, the Esquire returned to life as a three-screen theater. Among the opening films: “Cinema Paradiso,” winner of the Academy Award for best foreign film.

Later that year, the theater almost died again. Attendance dropped and debt mounted when it had trouble bringing in quality films. A reversal of fortunes began when Gary Goldman, whose family had decades of theater experience, was hired to run it. Three more screens were added in 1999.

Today almost three dozen partners own the Esquire.

Before or after a show, patrons can be found strolling along Ludlow, its ambiance born of an eclectic mix of shops and restaurants.

“It’s a tribute,” Mann says, “to what a core group of citizens that just won’t take no for an answer, can do.”